I apologize for my lack of posting. The crazy weather we’ve been having here on the East Coast has been causing my fibromyalgia and arthritis to flare, plus I’ve been busy with end of the year wrap-up on projects at work.  In happier news, my cousin/sister had her baby, a beautiful healthy baby boy named Leilan Joseph Phillip Caiden, on December 12.  My new nephew is absolutely precious, and a welcome reminder of the beauty of life in a year where I have attended my fair share of funerals.

Plans for things to come in the new year are already percolating.  In January, I’ll be heading down to Baltimore for a job interview as a lab technician in another circadian rhythms lab; this one uses mice instead of humans as subjects, but I’m thrilled and honored to even be considered for the position, as the lab is very well-known and does good research.  I’m also helping organize HealthCamp Philadelphia in March, which is already turning out to look like it will be fantastic.  

Our first event for Geeks Who Give turned out to be a HUGE success.  Over 125 people showed up; 32 boxes of food were donated to Philabundance.  I’m waiting for the official letter from Philabundance on the exact weight of food donated, but whatever the exact number is, it’s amazing for a 1 night food drive.  I can’t wait to jump into more charity events with Geeks Who Give in the new year.

I will hopefully be podcasting more once I get through the holidays as well.  I’m working on the plans for my own podcast, Biorhythms Weekly, where I explain research going on in the field of biological rhythms each week using layman’s terms using both audio and video.  I hope to launch sometime early next year; keep an eye out here and on Twitter for it!

I hope you all have holidays full of love and joy.  I’m behind on my own holiday shopping and holiday card making, so please forgive me if your holiday cards are a bit late this year.

Give back to the Philadelphia community AND have a great time next Tuesday December 9, from 6-9PM at National Mechanics in Olde City. Bring at least 5 nonperishable food items to be donated to Philabundance, the region’s largest hunger relief organization. Five nonperishable food items (but please bring more if you can!) will get you entered into the awesome food related raffles we are organizing! Also, at 7PM, Scott McNulty and Marisa McClellan of ForkYou will do a cooking demo using all nonperishable food items! Expect lots of fun times, great conversation, and fantastic people, gathering for a great cause!

Check out Geeks Who Give for more information, or RSVP on Facebook. See you on Tuesday night!

I’m a bit overwhelmed right now. I’m exhausted; I worked an overnight study on Friday night, slept a good portion of Saturday, had a nasty headache from the storm front that came through Philly, went grocery shopping, and then spent the evening hanging out with my darling boyfriend and another friend, watching Across the Universe. I think I finally got to bed around 1:30AM, after packing about half of my stuff for the conference I left for this morning.

I’m at the Society for Neuroscience Annual meeting, in Washington, DC, with the rest of my lab. It’s HUGE. There were 30,000 people at the convention center today, it’s mind-blowing how much is there. I spent most of the afternoon wandering around the vendor area and the poster presentations. I need to sit down with the book of stuff for tomorrow (there is a book for each day, literally a half inch thick book of what’s going on each day of the conference they gave me at checkin).

I know I’m a day or two behind on NanoBloPoMo, and I’m thousands of words behind on NanoWriMo. I’m not really terribly concerned; I am doing my best, but it’s a busy time right now for me. The main reason I’m doing these two things is to work on my writing, so I figure that needs to be ongoing and not just this month anyway. And I’m trying not to stress. So if I miss a day here or there, it’s not that big of a deal; I’m probably just swapped with work or recovering from work.

It’s 3AM on Friday night, and I’m at work. I have to be back at work at 10:30AM Sunday to leave for a conference for 4 days. Never boring

Keeping myself awake by listing things I love right now:

-not working by myself on a night study
-dark chocolate bars
-my wonderful boyfriend who will be picking me up when my shift is over so I don’t have to take the bus home
-getting to go to the largest neuroscience conference of the year (Society for Neuroscience, 35,000 people will be there!)
-all of the AWESOME Philly tech people who are great friends and do amazing things
-Twitter
-my mom, who always makes me feel better
-the impending arrival of my nephew!
-getting to go home for Thanksgiving for the first time in years
-having a space heater at my desk
-my lovable kitties
-my brothers, who are so excited I’m coming home for Thanksgiving
-the exciting prospect of freelancing/consulting in an area completely different than the science/academia I’ve immersed myself in the past 10 years
-the support from my amazing friends and family, near and far
-Vitamin Water
-getting to sleep in tomorrow!

Need to go do some measurements. T-minus about 45 more minutes at work tonight!

As I’ve mentioned in passing several times, I have quite a list of chronic illnesses. At the end of my junior year of high school, I was bitten by a brown recluse spider, one of the only two types of poisonous to humans spiders. I had a hard, purple indentation on the outside of my upper left thigh; I thought nothing of it originally. I was a busy student, and it didn’t hurt. My bus driver saw it the next day, since I was wearing shorts, and she recognized it as a brown recluse bite. My mom took me to Patient First that evening, and the doctors there didn’t quite know what to do with me. I ended up with a tetanus shot, giant antibiotic pills, and instructions to call a plastic surgeon immediately the next day. The plastic surgeon the next day said the antibiotics were like hitting a fly with a sledgehammer, so I stopped taking those. I spent the summer going to the plastic surgeon to have the necrotic tissue scrapped out every few weeks. I have a small round scar on my leg, that occasionally hurts because of some slight nerve damage.

When I started back at school in that fall for my senior year, I started having digestive problems. I’m not a big fan of doctors, so I just kind of dealt with it for several years. By the end of my freshman year of college, I was down to 85 lbs, and couldn’t keep much food in me. So I finally went to a gastroenterologist, who told me I have Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), did some blood tests, and gave me a prescription for an anti-spasmotic for my intestines. About a year later, I was back up at college in Philadelphia, and was having horrid abdominal pains, and once again wasn’t able to eat much. I went to another gastro doc, who ran all of the invasive tests this time - abdominal and pelvic CT, endoscopy, and colonoscopy. She ended up diagnosing me with IBS again, and tried me on several different meds, each one just giving me nasty side effects. I got online, did some research, and started treating myself with peppermint oil capsules, soluble fiber supplements, and watching what I eat. I’ve still had flare ups, but I’ve pretty much been able to handle my digestive system ever since.

About six months later, I started having muscle pain in my shoulders and legs. I thought it was just because of my backpack and walking so far from my apartment every day. However, nothing I did made it go away, it just kept getting worse, and I was exhausted all the time. The message boards I was on for my IBS had several people who also have fibromyalgia, a frequently comorbid condition. They suggested I get checked out for fibro as well, as my symptoms sounded very similar and weren’t getting better. I went a rheumatologist who told me I couldn’t have fibro because I wasn’t depressed, which I knew was not a diagnostic criteria for fibro. Doing my own research online again, I found a fibro clinic just north of Philadelphia. I started seeing the doctor there the summer of 2005, and have been going there ever since. Even with all the blood tests other doctors had done, diseases had been missed. I was shortly diagnosed with fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, chronic viral infections causing viral arthritis, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis (autoimmune hypothyroidism), Addison’s disease (low functioning adrenal glands, probably autoimmune), and a serotonin deficiency. I take a large number of bioidentical hormones, vitamins, and prescription pills, as seen above. The above picture is 1 day’s worth of pills for me. I have my blood tested every 4 months, when I can afford it, to check my levels of hormones, etc to see if my pills need to be adjusted.

I wear a medic alert bracelet every day, I have a collapsible cane when I’m having a bad flare, various braces, and heating pads to help with the pain. I don’t take any pain meds, they don’t work. I occasionally end up having to take a day off of work because I’ve done too much and I literally can’t get out of bed. I have to get 8 hours of sleep as many nights as I can, or else I get ill and flare up. Unfortunately, this can limit how much I can do sometimes. I’m usually pretty bad at saying no, and love doing as much as I can. Blogging, podcasting, and freelance voice work are all very illness-friendly tasks for me, which helps immensely.

The ligament in my left wrist is still torn (from being mugged at the end of September, and then exacerbated by me twisting caps on tubes at work a few weeks ago); this means that I’ve got a fairly heavy brace on my wrist/hand. And that I can’t really use my left arm/hand effectively. I can’t wash dishes, or really clean my apartment. Typing much on the computer just hurts (thus the purchase of MacSpeech Dictate recently). I’m a VERY independent person, so this almost two months of limited use of one of my limbs is very frustrating. My boyfriend has been wonderful about doing what he can in terms of housework, like dishes and cleaning the cats’ litterbox, so I don’t screw up my wrist again. However, I’m so used to being able to do cleaning around the house myself, and keeping our apartment clean myself, and I haven’t been able to.

Nothing I can do about it, just need to give my wrist time to heal. I managed to tear my ligament even worse when I messed it up at work, so I need to just keep it in a brace and give it time to heal, and occasionally use my heating pad on it. I’m not the most patient person, especially when it comes to myself. I guess for now I just have to live with being useless around the house for at least a few more weeks. Doesn’t mean I’m happy about it!

Change is stressful; uncertainty is stressful. I’m a planner; I write to-do lists constantly, I’m usually pretty uncomfortable if things are in flux and not figured out (though I’m getting better about that). I can be spontaneous, and I enjoy change and surprises; I just tend to plan more so than just act.

Which means my mind has been going crazy the past few months since my future has been up in the air. I’ve gone from planning to be in school for a few more years to graduating in May, being done with my thesis by March. I’m severely limited in what physically I can accomplish due to a torn ligament in my wrist. I’m limited financially by unexpected medical expenses due to crappy student insurance and getting unfortunately screwed over by a family member. Life as I planned it is no longer feasible.

And I’m trying not to plan it back out. Because so much is still up in the air right now. So I want to ask you, those who read this humble blog, what do you do to stay sane in times of change?

Right now, I’m being a bit more spontaneous, remembering to breath, reaching out to people I love and care about, and constantly reminding myself it’s ok to not know. And still writing to-do lists constantly. Any further suggestions? Greatly appreciated in advance.

I’m having one of those periods of time in my life where a lot of things aren’t going as planned for awhile, and I’m having to rethink almost my entire life plan, and it’s hard not to just keep spiraling deeper and deeper down. Occasionally there are things that knock me back up the spiral a bit, like BarCamp this past weekend, but then something else happens to knock me back down.

So I’m working on trying to at least stop the spiral before I hit bottom. Hopefully I can even spiral back up a little bit, but right now I’m working on things at least not getting any worse. I need a second job; a big part of the spiral right now is unexpected bills and expenses that are draining me financially and therefore also draining me mentally and emotionally. The entrepreneurial spirit of many of my BarCamp Philly friends is infectious; I’m working on looking for a job or clients to start freelancing. I’m going to start searching a bunch of sites for projects or potential clients, and update either a page here on my blog or on my other site, melissathiessen.com, as a portfolio/resume type thing.

I can do this. I can stop my life from spiraling down further. And then work on pulling myself back up.

P.S. I missed yesterday’s entry for NanoBloPoMo due to working on a departmental presentation today. This is entry 1 of 2 today to make up for that.

My lovely boyfriend took some video of the after party for Bar Camp Philly at National Mechanics last night.

First, we have Whitney Hess on Rock Band, essentially rapping. Very amusing for anyone who knows her.

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Then, we have Rachel Sooy yelling her heart out as we thank Roz Duffy and JP Toto for their work organizing BarCamp Philly.

P.S. Yesterday’s post was after midnight, but before I went to bed, so I’m counting it as still being on task for NanoBloPoMo!

Today I had an informative, creative, wonderful day with a group of great people at BarCamp Philadelphia. I worked with registration desk most of the morning, so I had the pleasure (and I truly mean that) of meeting most of the attendees. Some were old acquaintances and friends from PodCamp Philly, NYC Tweetups, etc., but I met and connected with a bunch of wonderful new people today as well. I even got to borrow and play with a Flip Mino all day, and I am hooked on it! I really want to get one for myself now!

The t-shirts are an awesome design, and very comfy; the sponsor stickers from LTL Prints look great and are an awesome product (reusuable/restickable!). The cupcakes from Open Source Cupcakes were very tasty, as was the pastries from Olde City Coffee in the morning. The sessions were informative, and open-minded, and have really got me thinking about lots of interesting stuff for me and my path through this crazy thing called life, which will be researched and fleshed out more in the coming weeks on this blog, I’m sure. AND there was a rocking after party at National Mechanics, with Rock Band, that was just such a fantastic ending to a wonderful day.

Pictures will be forthcoming, but for now, I need to get some sleep!